Coimbra

For two more centuries the university could not stay put. Kings moved it back to Lisbon in 1338 and again in 1377, and the second time it stayed away for more than 150 years. John III brought it back for good in 1537 and housed it in the old royal palace on the hilltop, which the university later bought from the crown, and from then on the city lived around its students. The religious orders built colleges on the slopes below, and in the 18th century the university raised the gilded Joanina library and its clock tower. In 1770 the Marquis of Pombal set a royal commission to reform it, and the Enlightenment arrived on the Mondego with new faculties of mathematics and natural philosophy.